Your Morning Phil: Theo, Hahn/Evans, Glanville

October 12, 2011|By Phil Rogers | Tribune reporter

Talking baseball while wondering if the Packers and Lions will be 10-0 when they play on Thanksgiving: 1. Office space at Wrigley Field has long been at a premium, and that’s going to be even more of an issue if Theo Epstein does replace Jim Hendry as the Cubs’ general manager.

On the day that Hendry was fired, I wrote that the search to replace him should be short -- just give the job to Rick Hahn, the highly regarded White Sox assistant GM who grew up studying the Cubs and their history.

I knew Tom Ricketts was fixated on big names -- Epstein, Brian Cashman, Andrew Friedman and Billy Beane -- but figured they were just four slices of pie in the sky. Oops.

Now that it appears Epstein is coming to Chicago, I’ve got a suggestion for him. His first move should be to recruit either Hahn -- a difficult trick given that he could offer him only a lateral move -- or Dan Evans as a co-conspirator on a staff that already has the well-respected Randy Bush in the assistant GM’s chair.

One of the reasons I felt Ricketts should hire Hahn is that he carries with him a lifelong understanding of the unique obstacles that have prevented the Cubs from experiencing any consistent success. He and Evans are Chicago natives who get it when it comes to the Cubs. That knowledge could be invaluable to Epstein, a graduate of Brookline High who will be leaving his home-field advantage in Boston.

Without it, I wonder if Epstein will be more than a general manager version of Dusty Baker and Lou Piniella. Like Epstein, they were the biggest names available in managerial searches run by Hendry, and fans were thrilled when they agreed to come to Chicago. But neither had the long-term success that Hendry envisioned, and both left saying they hadn’t really known what they were getting into at the start, that there were things unique to the Cubs that they hadn’t expected.

Evans could be an interesting piece in this. He’s started his baseball career as an intern with the White Sox and wound up as an assistant GM, in an era when Ken Williams went from being a journeyman big-leaguer to farm director.

Evans was like a sponge around former first Roland Hemond and then Ron Schueler and their experienced staffers, soaking up knowledge. He dealt with agents -- a task Schueler disdained -- and provided information and anaylsis central to player personnel moves. Evans worshipped Jerry Reinsdorf and felt he had received assurances that he would be promoted if Schueler ever left.

But when it happened, Williams -- the former player who watched games in Reinsdorf’s box, while Evans hung out with Schueler and the scouts -- was given the chance to take over a very successful organization. Evans was crushed and resigned after meeting with Reinsdorf the following day. He went on to a brief and mostly unsuccessful run as GM with the Dodgers and a stay as a special assistant to Bill Bavasi in Seattle, and has worked as a player agent in recent years.

Evans, according to sources, has interviewed for the job Epstein is getting. He’s got to be hugely disappointed that Epstein is willing to leave his beloved Red Sox to throw in with Ricketts. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t wind up as part of the operation.

Epstein will have to assemble a staff on the fly, with the Red Sox expected to prevent him from bringing along any of his top Boston guys. He should retain Bush, who knows how the organization has worked under Hendry, and create a position for either Hahn or Evans.

Would Hahn leave the White Sox? Maybe not, but he has to be frustrated that Reinsdorf has remained loyal to Williams despite three consecutive non-playoff seasons with a large payroll. He’s ready to run his own organization – he could get an interview with the Angels – and short of that opportunity might benefit from the fun likely to come from trying to help Epstein end another curse.

2. Will Epstein bring Terry Francona with him to manage? That’s a possibility, although it was Epstein’s staffers who made Francona crazy with frequent lineup/player suggestions during a 2011 season when Francona was already dealing with a troubled marriage and the stress of having both his son and a son-in-law in the military in Afghanistan.

Francona, according to many reports, didn’t do his best work this season, with a lack of player discipline contributing to the 7-20 September collapse. But he’s a good man and a good manager, which readers of the Boston Globe might question after reading a story on the Red Sox’s collapse in Wednesday’s Boston Globe. He details Francona battling a possible addiction to pain pills and the equivalent of a mid-life crisis after he and his wife separated. Make of it what you will. But it seems like he is being made a scapegoat for a second straight season that ended with the Red Sox on the outside looking in at the playoffs -- an unacceptable development in Red Sox Nation.

Epstein has an interesting call to make on the manager’s job. He and Francona have had their differences, but what Cubs fan wouldn’t want to see Francona in a Cubs’ uniform on Opening Day, 2012? The Quades of Mt. Prospect, sure, but beyond them, who?

3. Another name to be considered for a job: Doug Glanville. A backup outfielder on the 2003 Cubs, the guy is as smart as they come in baseball. Some team is going to be smart enough to get him out of the TV studio and in their front office before too long. It might as well be the Cubs.